Recently, to acquire data for determining circumstances at the time of a vehicle accident and a fault between parties, research and development on a vehicle black box for recording driving data such as vehicle speed have been conducted actively. In particular, a vehicle accident data recording apparatus has recently attracted much attention, which records external circumstances at the time of an accident as image data by using a camera mounted in the vehicle and uses pre- and post-accident external image data as well as driving data, thereby finding out cause of the accident. The accident of the vehicle means an unexpected event which may cause damage to a body of the vehicle or of a passenger, including not only small and large collisions between vehicles but also collisions between a pedestrian and a vehicle, collusions between an obstacle and a vehicle, and damage to vehicles during driving on a road construction zone having a dug road surface.
As such a conventional vehicle accident data recording apparatus, a vehicle driving recording apparatus and method is disclosed in Korean Patent Registration No. 0199792. The disclosed vehicle driving recording apparatus records image data collected by a camera during driving of a vehicle in a recording/reproduction unit, together with vehicle speed and time data, in a First In First Out (FIFO) structure, sensing a collision accident of the vehicle with a sensor, and stopping a recording operation and at the same time, holding data being input several minutes before the accident, thereby allowing recorded data to be used as corroborative facts for the accident.
However, the conventional vehicle accident data recording apparatus stores data in an FIFO manner and deletes the oldest data corresponding to an excess over capacity upon generation of new data, in which way the occurrence of a traffic accident is recognized and cause of the traffic accident is analyzed based on only data being stored before and after the accident.
As such, the conventional vehicle accident data recording apparatus determines a point-in-time at which the accident occurs by merely sensing impulse caused by a collision of the vehicle and analyzes cause of the accident only with limited data recorded before and after the point-in-time of the accident. As a result, data associated with initial cause leading to a large-scale accident, such as a minor collision between the vehicle and a bicycle, a motorcycle, a vehicle, or a person, or wheel missing or a slight shock accident, is deleted over time, making it difficult to find out initial cause of an accident, which is one of important clues for investigating the accident.